Location settings

An administrator can change the following location settings in Administration > Site administration > Location > Location settings.

Time zone settings

The time zone is used to help convert the raw timestamps in the database to human readable dates and times, for the user who is requesting the page.

Default time zone

Use this to set the default time zone for your site. This should be the time zone that most users use, or if that is difficult, where you When available, choose the Area/Location that is proper for you rather than use the UTC settings. These names are standardized by the IANA.

Note: As of Moodle 2.9, the older setting and button to allow you to update time zone codes from Moodle.org has been replaced with standard PHP date and time code. If your PHP version is over 6 months old, time zone data should be updated using the PECL timezonedb package.

Force timezone

If a particular time zone is forced, users will see the name of the time zone on their edit profile page and will be not be able to change it. If you wish to allow individual users to choose their own time zone, leave this at the default "Users can choose their own time zone."

Default country

Select the country to appear by default on a new user account page form.

Default city

Enter a default city for new user profiles. This may be left blank.

IP address lookup

GeoIP City data file

Location of GeoIP City binary data file. This is a non-invasive way to determine geographical and other information about Internet visitors in real-time. This file is not part of Moodle distribution and must be obtained separately from MaxMind. There is a GeoIPLite version for free at http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz. Extract the GeoLietCity.dat file and upload it to /moodledata/geoip/GeoLiteCity.dat.

You can check to see if the GeoIP data file is available to Moodle by going to: Administration > Site administration > Location > Location settings, under IP Address Lookup.

After updating the information in this section, IPs that are displayed as a link, such as in reports, when clicked will open new window with a Google Map indicating the location of the IP, if found and if not a private address.

All country codes

This is the list of countries that may be selected in various places, for example in a user's profile. If blank (the default) the list in countries.php in the standard English language pack is used. Otherwise, you can specify a comma-separated list of codes, for example 'GB,FR,ES' in ISO-3166-1 format.

The list of countries is based on the ISO 3166 list of official country short names, but is not exactly the same. See the comment in MDL-56181 for more details.